Adolf Hitler Uunona, a Namibian politician named after the infamous dictator of Nazi Germany, has retained a seat he has held in the Southern African nation since 2004.
Per Euronews, Uunona was re-elected for the fifth consecutive time to represent his constituency after emerging victorious in Namibia’s local elections on Wednesday.
Uunona, 59, was first elected to represent the Ompundja Constituency in the Oshana region in 2004. The politician has since been serving his people on the ticket of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), the political party and former guerrilla movement that played a key role in Namibia’s independence from apartheid South Africa in March 1990.
Though the official vote tally is yet to be released by Namibia’s Electoral Commission, several reports indicate that Uunona retained his seat by a significant margin. In 2020, Uunona similarly retained his seat by securing 85% of the votes.
Despite his conspicuous name, Uunona has been going about his work, as local media reported that he has been touted for his contributions at the grassroots level and his anti-apartheid endeavors, per Euronews.
In an interview with German news outlet Bild, after his decisive 2020 victory, Uunona emphasized that his name did not mean he was “striving for world domination,” Face2Face Africa reported at the time.
“The fact I have this name does not mean I want to conquer Oshana,” he said, referring to his region in Namibia.
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The politician revealed his father named him after Hitler – the man who masterminded the mass murder of around 6 million Jews during World War II – unbeknownst of his atrocities and what he stood for.
“My father named me after this man. He probably didn’t understand what Adolf Hitler stood for,” he said, adding that he got to know the real identity of the man he had been named after during his teenage years.
“As a child I saw it as a totally normal name. Only as a teenager did I understand that this man wanted to conquer the whole world,” he said.
He also told Bild: “It was a perfectly normal name for me when I was a kid. It wasn’t until I grew older that I realized that this man wanted to subjugate the whole world and killed millions of Jews.”
Asked why he hadn’t changed his name, Uunona said it was a little too late, as it’s on all official documents, Africanews reported. “It’s in all official documents, it’s too late for that,” he said.
The politician, however, said he omits Hitler from his name and rather uses Adolf Uunona when identifying himself to the public. A former German colony known as German South West Africa, Uunona said the name Adolf was common in Namibia when it was under the European country’s administration.
South Africa gained control of Namibia after the First World War, before the country ultimately gained independence in 1990.
